When stories began to emerge about the U.S. government's massive surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet communications, it was no surprise to a group of analysts who had left the National Security Agency soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. Those analysts, who'd worked on systems to detect terrorist threats, left in part because they saw the NSA embarking on a surveillance program they regarded as unconstitutional and unnecessary.

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Two of those analysts, Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe, are interviewed in a*Frontlinedocumentary called*United States of Secrets, which airs Tuesday night.

Binney was a cryptomathematician who worked as technical director of the NSA's World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group.

Wiebe was a senior analyst who was awarded the NSA's Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the agency's second-highest honor.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Binney led a team that created a program called "Thin Thread," which could gather and analyze enormous amounts of Internet and telephone traffic and encrypt the identities of people in the U.S. so their privacy was protected.

Both Binney and Wiebe left the agency in 2001 after working there for decades and have publicly criticized the course the NSA has taken. Both were also eventually targeted in a leak investigation by the FBI that led to their homes being raided.

After they left the NSA, they joined others in filing a complaint with the inspector general of the Defense Department about the agency's use of private contractors to develop a surveillance system the analysts regarded as expensive, ineffective and abusive of citizens' constitutional rights.

*In*United States of Secrets, a two-part series airing May 13 and 20, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to reveal the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.*

Part one, from Michael Kirk (League of Denial,*Bush’s War), goes inside Washington to piece together the secret political history of “The Program,” which began in the wake of September 11 and continues today—even after the revelations of its existence by Edward Snowden.*

Then, in part two, Martin Smith (The Untouchables,To Catch a Trader) explores the secret relationship between Silicon Valley and the National Security Agency: How have the government and tech companies worked together to gather and warehouse your data?*

Part political thriller and part spy novel,*United States of Secrets*is FRONTLINE's definitive history of domestic surveillance in a post-9/11 world.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) directly sends all of the intelligence that it gathers to the Israeli regime, a political analyst tells Press TV.

“We now know that all of the NSA’s spying is going directly to Israel,” James H. Fetzer, a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, said in a Saturday interview.

“I believe that all of our allies should discontinue sharing their intelligence with the Unites States unless they are willing that it should go directly to Tel Aviv,” the analyst said.

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nites Nations to undertake an exploration of this because it appears to be a violation of national sovereignty for one nation to be spying on the communications of its highest executive officials,” Fetzer added.

He said even if the UN passed a resolution against spying, there would be no guarantee that the two countries would stop their illegal acts of espionage.

“That would be a very appropriate thing for the United Nations to do. But I must admit that Israel and the United States have regularly violated international law and its constraints with impunity,” Fetzer noted, adding, “So, there is no guarantee that even if the United Nations were to pass a resolution against it, that they would discontinue their massive spying efforts especially on the leaders of foreign nations.

”The remarks come against the backdrop of revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former employee of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who leaked two top secret US government spying programs against American and foreign nationals.

The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about US espionage targeting friendly countries.

Last October, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a visit to Washington after it was revealed that her cellphone was monitored by the US surveillance program, as were the state oil company Petrobras and Brazilian citizens.

Hats off to*Microsoft, it just saved 1 in 4 of the world’s PCs. That is the frightening proportion still running Windows XP and all of them were left crippled after adangerous security hole*was found in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Support for XP ended just a few weeks earlier and Microsoft pledged no more patches would come.

Now*Microsoft has made a radical U-turn to save 25% of PCs and it is one of the bravest but stupidest things the company has done*.

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“Even though Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft and is past the time we normally provide security updates, we’ve decided to provide an update for all versions of Windows XP (including embedded), today,” said Microsoft’s Adrienne Hall in an*official TechNet blog post. “We made this exception based on the proximity to the end of support for Windows XP.”

Hall said the patch went live immediately and would download automatically via XP’s previously dead Windows Update. For those determined to make sure they get the update immediately you can follow these simple steps:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Open Windows Update
3. Manually click the ‘Check for Updates’ button

Well done Microsoft, this was an admirable act of compassion. It was also utterly moronic.

Having spent*years*pushing businesses and consumers to ditch XP – running adverts, flashing warnings on its website, pushing notifications (like the one below) repeatedly to users’ desktops and effectively saying ‘GET. OFF. XP. NOW!’ – Microsoft has just told users who ignored all those warnings: ‘Don’t worry, we were bluffing. Carry on.’